• Energy Research

By combining scholarship on modernity, urbanization and territory, this paper analyses how urban-based visions and ambitions have been realized in hydropower development and specific water access and control arrangements in the Rímac watershed in Lima, Peru. The discourses that sustained and promoted hydropower plant construction and associated development projects in the watershed are scrutinized, showing how the dream of conquering nature through engineers' technical skills was enmeshed with political agendas and visions of modernizing not only nature, but also people. Besides the historical analysis, the paper also explores how historical physical-ecological, legal, social and symbolic reconfigurations continue to shape hydrosocial relations between the city of Lima and the Rímac watershed. Analysing the current management of the watershed's highland lakes and community water use from the hydropower company's tunnels shows how the history of the Rímac is not a clear cut story of water deprivation but rather of complex, entangled, multidimensional relations and dependence. In the context of increasing pressure on water resources, the socio-territorial arrangements and the watershed's history itself are becoming matters of discussion.

La transition vers les sources d’énergie renouvelables reconfigure l’utilisation des terres dans les zones rurales et périurbaines européennes. Ces processus ont diverses implications sociales, écologiques et économiques au niveau local et déclenchent des réactions divergentes qui vont jusqu’à la contestation pure et simple et au refus de l’accueil des projets d’énergie renouvelable. Cet article analyse les dynamiques et les réponses à la construction de centrales solaires à grande échelle dans le paysage périurbain et rural de Vall d’Albaida (Valence, Espagne). Grâce à l’analyse de la littérature grise, des rapports des médias et des entretiens semi-structurés avec divers acteurs impliqués dans les centrales photovoltaïques ou affectés par celles-ci, cette étude examine la manière dont les processus d’enfermement, d’empiètement, d’exclusion et d’enracinement se déroulent, conditionnant un large éventail de réponses de la part des parties prenantes. Alors que certains activistes contestent ouvertement les projets, de nombreux résidents locaux et agriculteurs s’accommodent de leur implantation. Les raisons de cette dernière attitude incluent des motivations économiques liées au contexte plus large du secteur agricole dans la région, des trajectoires de projet et des prises de décision peu transparentes, un manque de ressources ou une aptitude limitée ressentie pour une contestation ouverte. Grâce à l’analyse des contestations et des accommodements, ainsi que des processus sous-jacents, l’article élargit le débat actuel sur les implications locales de la transition vers les énergies renouvelables dans les zones périurbaines. The European transition to renewable energy sources is increasingly reconfiguring land use in rural and peri-urban areas. These processes of change have diverse local social, ecological, and economic implications, and trigger divergent responses that range from outright contestation and protest, to welcoming and accommodating renewable energy projects. This paper analyses the dynamics and responses to the construction of large-scale solar plants in the peri-urban and rural landscape of Vail d'Albaida (Valencia, Spain). Through the analysis of grey literature, media reports and semi-structured interviews with diverse actors involved in, or affected by, photovoltaic power stations, this study dissects how processes of enclosure, encroachment, exclusion, and entrenchment take place simultaneously, conditioning a wide range of responses from stakeholders. While some activists openly challenge the projects, numerous local residents and farmers accommodate the construction. The reasons for the latter include economic motivations that relate to the wider context of the agricultural sector in the region; untransparent project trajectories and decision-making; a lack of resources to contest or a limited responsibility felt to openly contest. Through the analysis of both contestations and accommodations, as well as the underlying processes, the paper expands the current debate on local implications of the renewable energy transition in peri-urban areas.

The European transition to renewable energy sources is increasingly reconfiguring land use in rural and peri-urban areas. These processes of change have diverse local social, ecological, and economic implications, and trigger divergent responses that range from outright contestation and protest, to welcoming and accommodating renewable energy projects. This paper analyses the dynamics and responses to the construction of large-scale solar plants in the peri-urban and rural landscape of Vall d’Albaida (Valencia, Spain). Through the analysis of grey literature, media reports and semi-structured interviews with diverse actors involved in, or affected by, photovoltaic power stations, this study dissects how processes of enclosure, encroachment, exclusion, and entrenchment take place simultaneously, conditioning a wide range of responses from stakeholders. While some activists openly challenge the projects, numerous local residents and farmers accommodate the construction. The reasons for the latter include economic motivations that relate to the wider context of the agricultural sector in the region; untransparent project trajectories and decision-making; a lack of resources to contest or a limited responsibility felt to openly contest. Through the analysis of both contestations and accommodations, as well as the underlying processes, the paper expands the current debate on local implications of the renewable energy transition in peri-urban areas.

This article studies how urbanization processes and associated rural-urban water transfers in the Lima region (Peru) create water control hierarchies that align the municipal drinking water company, hydropower plants and rural communities on unequal positions. By scrutinizing the history of water transfers and hydropower development in the Lima region, the paper shows how imaginaries about the superiority of engineering, the need to generate electricity for national development, the backwardness of the ‘land of lagoons’ where water is diverted from, and about wished-for water abundance in Lima, all became manifested in hydraulic megaprojects. More than technical means to supply water to Lima City, these hydraulic grids, supported by legal, institutional and financial governance techniques; produce diverging material, social-symbolic and political effects for rural and urban water users. While the established system means water control and access for hydropower and drinking water companies, it implies dependence and/or exclusion from the benefits for rural communities. More specifically and beyond questions of outright water grabbing, perceived injustices involve the distribution of water-related benefits, loss of autonomy, and the socio-environmental impacts of territorial transformations.

The paper analyses how hydropower development in the Rimac watershed in the region of Lima, Peru, has reconfigured hydrosocial relations between the different water users since the 19th century. It shows how the hydropower development was supported and sustained first, by discourses about modernity, civilization and the need to domesticate nature and people through engineering; and second, by an evolving alliance of convenience between the hydropower company and Lima City’s drinking water company. Yet, this development has not straight forwardly let to rural communities being deprived of water, but rather to new dependency and power connections that may even provide additional water to local peasants. Recently, the revival of hydropower development in the watershed as well as worries about the adverse effects of climate change stir concerns of rural communities about the distribution of benefits and their position within the ecological and socio-political networks of the Rimac territories.